Social Selling Tips of the Week: Olympic Strength

August 19, 2016

We’ve all been marveling at the competitive spirit on display from some of the best Olympic athletes over the past two weeks—from Michael Phelps to Simone Biles to Usain Bolt.

These Olympians have managed to stay on top of their sports year-after-year. Not only does that take natural talent, but also intense focus, preparation, and the drive to never be satisfied with being second-best.

Approaching your sales game the same way Phelps and Biles approach their sports is a great way to rise to the top of your field and successfully sell to high-level executives. In this week’s social selling tips, we take a look at how to do so.

Read on to learn how you can keep motivating yourself even when you’re ahead of the competition, play the game on your own terms, stick to a practice regimen, and learn from top talent.

“The problem with being the top performer is that it makes further achievement more difficult. It's easy to get complacent,” Hedges cautions. To counter that complacency, he advises that you should forget your sales quota—set higher goals for yourself with each month, quarter and year. He also encourages educating yourself, via webinars and books, to learn innovative sales strategies and using guided sales tools to make sure you’re practicing “repeatable consistent sales processes.”

2. Play the Game on Your Terms

We are often heard the words “It’s not in our budget” or “call me in three months” from buyers who say they are not ready to make a purchase. When that happens, you may be tempted to walk away for a while. But if you do, you’ve lost your opportunity, Liz Shivvers explains on Salesforce.com. Instead, you want to keep swimming laps, if you will, “by engaging the prospect when they’re still working to define the problem.” That way, she writes “you can reframe how buyers think about their challenges and potential solutions.”

That way, you’ve influenced how they think about their pain points and challenges—and given yourself crucial insights on to how to tailor your pitch to their needs.

3. Work Hard Every Day

Finally, these athletes go through years of daily practice to get where they go. So Aja Frost at HubSpot put together a practice schedule for sales pros: It’s a diet of what you can do on LinkedIn every day, week, month and quarter. They all involve staying connected with people so you can engage.

Among others, the daily activities include browsing your news feed, paying attention to trigger events to stay in touch with connections that could one day become prospects, and making connection requests. Weekly tasks include posting in groups and commenting on Pulse. And each month you should be following new influencers, based on which influencers your prospects follow.

4. Engage with Top Talent

Finally, perhaps no other industry faces a greater challenge of how to land big deals than the financial services industry, where executives can receive 50 phone calls and 200 emails each day.

As you can see from this week’s tips, staying top-of-mind with high-level executives involves not getting discouraged, listening closely to each prospect to form your own message, repeated practice, and engaging with insights.